Architecture and Public Policy

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CIS explores how changes in the architecture of computer networks affect the economic environment for innovation and competition on the Internet, and how the law should react to those changes. This work has lead us to analyze the issue of network neutrality, perhaps the Internet's most debated policy issue, which concerns Internet user's ability to access the content and software of their choice without interference from network providers.

Professor of Law and Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, and Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Barbara van Schewick is a Professor of Law and Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering in Stanford University’s Department of Electrical Engineering, and a leading expert on net neutrality.

Paddy Leerssen was the Open Internet Fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society in 2017-2018. AT CIS, he worked on digital media and communications law in general, and net neutrality policy in particular. He is now a PhD Candidate at the University of Amsterdam, where his dissertation focuses on the impacts of algorithmic content recommendations on the governance of media pluralism. Paddy holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, where he studied as a Fulbright Scholar, an LL.M. from the University of Amsterdam, and an LL.B. from Maastricht University.

Marvin Ammori is a leading First Amendment lawyer and Internet policy expert. He was instrumental to the adoption of network neutrality rules in the US and abroad–having been perhaps the nation’s leading legal advocate advancing network neutrality–and also instrumental to the defeat of the SOPA and PIPA copyright/censorship bills.

Emily Baxter is a research associate for Women's Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress, focusing on women's and families' economic security, women's leadership, and work-family balance. She previously worked as the special assistant for the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center. In the fall of 2012, Emily was a field organizer for President Obama’s re-election campaign near her hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania.

The people of Baltimore are beginning their fifth week under an electronic siege that has prevented residents from obtaining building permits and business licenses – and even buying or selling homes. A year after hackers disrupted the city’s emergency services dispatch system, city workers throughout the city are unable to, among other things, use their government email accounts or conduct routine city business.

The security of our news and media information systems matters as much as the security of personal and commercial information systems. "Information warfare" shows that harms can arise even when there is no unauthorized access, when tools are used as intended, and when there’s no compromise of user privacy settings. In both cases of cybersecurity and news/media security, the threats are asymmetric, the tools readily available, usable for many purposes, and threats are easily disguised as benign.

Today I join several cybersecurity, civil liberties, civil society organizations and researchers in responding to the United Kingdom's GCHQ recent proposal to silently add 'ghost' users from law enforcement or the security services to online chats and calls, including those conducted via encrypted messaging tools like WhatApp, iMessage, or Signal.

On Tuesday, October 27, the European Parliament will vote on rules intended to protect network neutrality in the European Union (EU). However, the proposal about to be adopted fails to deliver network neutrality to the EU and is much weaker than current net neutrality rules in the United States. Fortunately, it’s not too late to change course. Members of Parliament can still secure meaningful network neutrality for Europe — if they adopt key amendments on Tuesday.

Tomorrow, the European Parliament will vote on a proposal that will decide the future of the open Internet in Europe. The proposal is supposed to protect net neutrality, the principle that keeps the Internet an open and free platform, but it contains dangerous loopholes that threaten the future of free speech, innovation, and democracy in Europe.

Tomorrow, the European Parliament will vote on a proposal that will decide the future of the open Internet in Europe. The proposal is supposed to protect net neutrality, the principle that keeps the Internet an open and free platform, but it contains dangerous loopholes that threaten the future of free speech, innovation and democracy in Europe.

Wait, didn't we already win network neutrality?

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Comcast Corp. v. FCC is a 2010 United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia case holding that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have ancillary jurisdiction over Comcast’s Internet service under the language of the Communications Act of 1934. In so holding, the Court vacated a 2008 order issued by the FCC that asserted jurisdiction over Comcast’s network management polices and censured Comcast from interfering with its subscribers' use of peer-to-peer software.

In 2005, on the same day the FCC re-classified DSL service and effectively reduced the regulatory obligations of DSL providers, the FCC announced its unanimous view that consumers are entitled to certain rights and expectations with respect to their broadband service, including the right to:

"“Blockchain technology is not a necessary or core component of cybersecurity,” said Arvind Narayanan, a computer science associate professor at Princeton University. “Policymakers should view it as one tool among many.”"

"“Net neutrality is actually a lot broader than just protecting businesses,” says Barbara van Schewick, director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. “If it had been in effect, the Santa Clara Fire Department would have an avenue to ask for help in resolving this problem.”

"Stanford Law School’s (SLS) Center for Internet and Society Junior Affiliate Scholar and outgoing Lecturer in Law Morgan Weiland has been awarded the 2018 Harry W. Stonecipher Award for Distinguished Research in Media Law and Policy for her 2017 article, “Expanding the Periphery and Threatening the Core: The Ascendant Libertarian Speech Tradition.” The article, published in the Stanford Law Review in May 2017, uncovers a new theory undergirding the First Amendment’s expansion to include commercial and corporate speech.

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Stanford CIS brings together scholars, academics, legislators, students, programmers, security researchers, and scientists to study the interaction of new technologies and the law and to examine how the synergy between the two can either promote or harm public goods like free speech, innovation, privacy, public commons, diversity, and scientific inquiry

This year’s Security of Things Forum will feature two tracks: Leaders and Hackers that are intended to balance high-level talks and panel discussions focused on the operational and policy impacts of securing the Internet of Things with a variety of hands-on demonstrations, tutorials and granular “shop talks” on everything to IoT device hacking to protocols and platform as a service options, to securing IoT devices in enterprises and critical infrastructure settings.

Valarie Kaur, a civil rights lawyer, documentary filmmaker and interfaith leader, will deliver the commencement address during the 100th annual commencement ceremony at the College of Saint Benedict at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 9, in Clemens Field House on the CSB campus, St. Joseph, Minnesota.

The days are numbered for federal net neutrality regulations. In response, some states are working on their own versions to prevent internet service providers (ISP) from blocking, slowing or charging more for some web traffic. Oregon, Washington and several other states have made new rules, but a bill working its way through the California legislature would go the furthest. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood spoke with Ryan Singel, a media and strategy fellow at Stanford Law School, about how a state can regulate a business that crosses state lines.